How do I create pages?

Summary:
Making a new page is fairly simple:
- click “manage content” to go to the control panel
- click “pages”
- add a subdirectory
- add a page with the title: index
- use template: “generic inside page”
- Save!

Watch this short video about adding new webpages.

Transcript

Part One: Intro
Welcome to How to Create a Page. Before we begin, you might ask yourself a basic question: do I need to create a new page? Or would a LiveWhale News story or Event be better?

Pages are better for programatic content of, shall we say, “lasting” importance, while News and Events are better for calendar-related content of, shall we say, “passing” importance. For example, an upcoming speaker series should be in Events, so it can be accessed by everyone at Lewis & Clark via our shared master calendar at http://www.lclark.edu/calendars/events/

But if you do need to add a new page, then you should feel free to contact us at New Media for help – our email is wwwadmin@lclark.edu – as it is a fairly complex process.
OK, we should now walk through the main steps in the process. Let’s say for example that I need to have a new page of international resources in my New Media site. How would I do it?

First, once I have logged into the LiveWhale control center at http://www.lclark.edu/livewhale, I click on the “Pages” tab to see my group’s current webpages.

You can see that each page actually consists of two components:
• a “subdirectory” folder and,
• within that folder, an index file.

Every page at Lewis & Clark is built using these two components. So to make a new page, you would NOT start by clicking “add a page to this directory” on the right, which might seem logical; no, instead you would start by clicking “add a new subdirectory” next to it. (The words subdirectory, directory, and folder all mean the same thing, by the way.)

Part Two: Add a Directory
This takes me to the “Add Directory” screen, which tells me the pathway (or URL) for the new folder. Here in this example it is root/new_media/resources/ and root means lclark.edu.

And it asks for the folder name. In our navigation, this will be analogous to the page name; that is, it should be descriptive of what the content that will go on the page.
When naming a directory, keep in mind that this is one of the key ways search engines like Google find and identify your pages. So be descriptive and helpful with your naming. And use human words, not weird abbreviations or chopped up or jammed up words; they are worthless to search engines.

What else? The folder name can have no capital letters, just all lower case. And it can be only one word. Or a series of words connected with underscores. You can have no spaces, but you can use underscores in lieu of spaces.

So I could name my new directory international_resources. That would be fine, except we should avoid repetition; and the path will be lclark.edu/new_media/resources/international_resources. So I will name it instead just “international,” alright?

Now me directory has its name, I hit “save and return to pages.” We are nearly done!

Part Three: Add a Page
For the final step, I click on the directory to open it. Hmmm, it is empty. Now what? I need to add that index file. So, I press the “add a page to this directory” button, taking us to “add a page.”

The title for this new file must be index! This makes an “index.php” file that enables the pathway lclark.edu/new_media/resources/international/ to work all on its own without any computery, engineery “dot PHP” or “dot whatevers,” you follow?

The template for almost any kind of pages will be “Generic Inside page,” so I choose that for the template.

And I save the page, and I am good to go. We have created a page and can now start adding our content to it.

I click “View and edit page” and dive into editing.

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If you have questions about this or any other topic related to your work on the Lewis & Clark website, we want to hear from you!